Conversations in the Dark
by tersaseda
Summary: After coming back from Neverland, Emma finds herself unable to sleep one night. She raids the fridge but ends up with much more food for thought than she'd planned.


Four? Really—_four_?

For the millionth time, Emma cursed Neverland. This time, specifically, because wherever it technically was in the whole, wide universe had given her horrible jetlag. Or shiplag. Or realmlag. Whatever. The place been horrible enough; it didn't need to keep haunting her in her sleep and wake her up at four in the morning.

Tossing and turning in her bed was only more frustrating, so taking it out on her sheets, she kicked them off with a few savage blows. She was done with Neverland—she reminded herself—and never had to go back. She should be grateful. A little loss of sleep in the comfort of her own bed was a small price to pay for having everyone intact and safe and _home_, negligible really.

"Well…" she muttered, looking around her room. There was a magazine on the nightstand. _Learn how to lose two sizes in two weeks. Leave your man begging for mo—_

The trashcan was no longer empty.

Emma padded heavily into the kitchen, stifling a yawn. Opening the fridge, she silently thanked Ruby for stocking it and grabbed a tub of…hmm, pot roast. Comfort food. Perfect.

"Couldn't sleep, either, huh?"

Emma spun around with a gasp, the Tupperware clutched to her thumping chest. A shadow was sitting hunched at the counter, and she had to repress a shiver for all that the darkness conjured up in her mind. After a second, it registered that she knew this shadow's outline, knew the steadiness of its voice.

David…um, dad.

"Don't do that," she hissed, brandishing her fork at him in warning.

A laughterless huff of air. "Sorry. I keep forgetting that it wasn't all some horrible dream I just woke up from."

She sat on the stool next to him and tucked into the pot roast. "I know what you mean."

"Four in the morning."

"Exactly."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, each chewing and swallowing the spoils of their midnight refrigerator raids. The stillness wasn't just the quiet of the apartment, and it made Emma thankful that in this innocent darkness, her own father wouldn't notice how tense her body was from simply being next to him.

"So…" David said quietly, "what's your dream about?"

Emma knew exactly what he meant, but how could she begin to explain the strange vividness of her dreams, like she was actually back in Neverland? Running down path after path in the jungle, her sword useless at hacking away at the vines that snaked out to pull her into their depths. Where she was utterly alone, searching for Henry or her parents or…. But no matter how far she trekked or how loudly she yelled, the only sound was jungle whispering to jungle. Sometimes she searched so long that she even forgot who she was even searching for, which made it that much worse because then there were all these senseless holes punched throughout her and she had no idea how to sew them up again.

Thinking of telling him all of this was like being back in the Echo Cave. Her heart was racing.

She really did not want to do this…

"Can we—can we talk about something else? Please?"

She heard him shift in his chair. "Sure."

"Thanks," she breathed with a sigh of relief.

In hushed tones—Mary Margaret was sleeping—they started talking about going back to the police station in the morning, even though everyone they'd talked to in Storybrooke since they got back waved off their desire to tuck their heads down and get back to their lives. _There's no rush_, they would say. Sometimes with a small smile or a pat on the arm.

"It's annoying," Emma mumbled, talking with her mouth full. "I can't stand just sitting around here, doing nothing all day long. It's just not…me."

"It's not me either. Like father, like daughter." He reached over and put his hand on her shoulder.

The familiarity of his words and touch weighed too much on Emma, and she abruptly got out of her chair.

"Um…I'm tired now," she lied, hating herself for being the one who had to walk away first, especially as he was trying _so hard_. "See you in the morning, Deputy Nolan."

A few long seconds. "'Night, Sheriff Swan."

* * *

Ugh, three-thirty.

Emma stayed perched on the edge of her bed, wondering if David was up again tonight, too, as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She'd had the same damn dream and was in desperate need of more of Granny's soul food, even if it meant another awkward conversation with her father.

Standing up with determination, she steeled herself. "You can do this, Emma."

He was there. Same stool. Same quietness. In spite of herself, she took some comfort in that.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey," he replied. He sounded surprised. "There's, uh, another tub of tomato basil soup in fridge. I highly recommend it."

The delight in his voice shimmered in the air and coaxed a brief upward tug on her mouth. "Thanks." Forgoing the microwave, she sat down by him in the same stool she'd sat in the night before. "Mmm, this _is_ good," she said after a few bites.

A deep chuckle. "Told you. Would your old dad lead you astray?"

Memories of Neverland burst into life as if she was really reliving them all over again. His bravery in the face of the Shadow, his trust in her instincts as Henry's mother, him being second only to her in the charge to rescue Henry from Pan's camp.

"No, never," she blurted out. _Never_, she told herself. The word hinted at acceptance, a promise. Forgiveness. Its unfamiliarity nagged at her, gently probing around her heart, seeking to gain a permanent stronghold inside its already shifting foundations.

Hmm, maybe something good _could_ come from Neverland.

* * *

That night, it was cherry pie and whipped cream.

"Mary Margaret is going to kill me. No. I'm going to gain fifty pounds, and _then_ she's going to kill me," David groaned, scraping his fork against the plate for good measure. With a satisfied sigh, he then stretched his arms above his head so high that something popped.

Emma huffed. "There's got to be something in all that True Love business that precludes that possibility."

"Or maybe it's just that it's _only_ your True Love who gets to keep you on the straight and narrow despite all costs."

"Where I'm from, we call that 'the old ball and chain.'"

David's bark of laughter was like a gunshot through the apartment. Mary Margaret mumbled something in her sleep but didn't wake. Emma found herself strangely relieved that she hadn't.

"Opps," her dad whispered, but Emma could see the muted white of his smile.

She smiled tentatively back. "Never wake a sleeping giant."

"Wouldn't dream of it," he said, reaching over to steal a bite of her pie.

Indulgingly, she let him.

* * *

The next, it was chicken pot pie.

Before she was able to cross to the kitchen, she saw a flash of light on a fork held out to her and heard a skidding across the counter. She saw the Tupperware container sitting halfway between their stool chairs.

An invitation to share.

She sat down quietly.

"I'm starting to think we're cursed." He spoke first.

"Well," she quipped back, "_you_ at least should be used to it."

He reached over and mussed up her already mussed up hair.

* * *

"What's on the menu tonight?" she whispered with a covert smirk.

"Meatloaf and mashed potatoes," he answered back in hushed tones.

They were already well into their conversation about Henry's readjustment to school and splitting his time between her, Neal, and Regina when she realized she'd just automatically sat down next to him and how her place had been set with a placemat, a fork, a glass of water, food…and her dad.

There were still a few hours before sunrise, but over the past week, Emma was finding it one of her favorite times of the day.

"I think," David began after finishing another bite, "that lasagna is now my new favorite food."

"Ah," Emma said, nodding with understanding. "Well, I'd kill for a bacon cheeseburger, but this is definitely hitting the spot."

A pause. One like the first night this impromptu tradition had started with, but also much, much different. Instinct had her aware of the shift, and she turned slightly in anticipation to face whatever was coming head-on.

"So, is that it, a burger? Your favorite food?" His voice was heavy in its softness. He had turned to face her, too.

Her pause. There it was again, that soft probing, asking…pleading…offering…reassuring.

She could step back a bit, she told herself, and make room inside her walls for this. "It's up there, definitely in the top five," she answered. And because it was so dark and quiet and safe in that very moment, "Also up there are cheesecake, roasted asparagus, a medium rare steak, and hot dogs. But the kind you get from the ballpark, not…you know…the kind you make at home. There's just something about eating a hot dog at a baseball game with ketchup and mustard and sauerkraut piled so high you have to use three napkins just to finish the thing."

And because it was still so dark and quiet and safe, and because now that she'd let that question in, she realized _how much_ more room there actually was, she sent out her own gentle probing. "I used to go the Red Sox games every now and then, when I lived in Boston. Always in the nosebleed seats. They went to the World Series one year, and being in the city around all the diehards was contagious. It made going by myself okay to deal with. I even got into marking down all the stats like a real _Sawx_ fan."

She surprised herself by chuckling a little at her horrible attempt at an accent. David surprised her by chuckling, too.

"We'll have to go to a game sometime. Now that we can leave Storybrooke with our memories intact. You can show me how to keep those stats, and I'll buy you a hotdog."

"Yeah…that would be…nice."

And, she surprised herself again, she _did_ think it sounded nice.

"Care to hear my top five?" he offered.

"Sure," she replied breathlessly, like she'd just battled a dragon and won. To cover it, she tucked into the lasagna again.

"It's kind of a mix between here and the Enchanted Forest: so…lasagna, roast lamb, blackberry turnovers, clam chowder, and…s'mores poptarts."

The bite she was swallowing got caught in her throat and she laughed around her coughing. "P-poptarts? Of all the things…_poptarts_?"

David thumped her on the back. "Yee-up," he popped on the _p_, "S'mores poparts."

Their stools creaked with the shakes from the laughter they were trying to stifle for Mary Margaret's consideration, which oddly only made it all that much funnier.

"Well, we definitely don't have _that_ in common," Emma said after a while, little bubbles of laughter still trickling out.

"No," David conceded, scooping up another forkful of lasagna, "but there are other things."

Emma took another bite.

Pondering his words, the probing became insistent, like it was trying to make her see something _just there_ in her periphery. This was new for them, this being, just living quietly now in the aftermath of so much turmoil. There was no curse, no Evil Queen to overthrow, no more rescue mission to save Henry. Just Emma and David up in the middle of the night, and Mary Margaret asleep close by. Just a father and daughter awake while a mother slept.

The simple thought struck Emma like a sledgehammer.

As if he sensed the undercurrent, too, David leaned over and nudged Emma's shoulder. She could actually _feel_ the affection in it, and her eyes prickled at how it felt like she was five years old and telling jokes with someone who she knew would always laugh at them because they were so funny—even though, in an adult's reality, they were silly, nonsensical things like _Knock, knock? Who's there? Bubblegum._ Someone who she knew she could trust showing the butterfly landing on the flower outside her window and who would marvel at its beauty with her. Someone who cared about what she did simply because he cared for _her_.

"For example…" David suddenly spoke, picking up his empty dish and placing it in the sink, "we both prefer brunets."

Her fork froze halfway to her mouth. _Did he really just—?_

"As I said, like father, like daughter. Goodnight...what's left of it, anyways."

And with another chuckle and a kiss on her head, he went back to bed, leaving Emma blushing and grateful anew for the darkness.


End file.
